Cold wind howled past the blistering fields of suffering. Through the snowcapped planes of Flesperia, the blizzard threatened every roof it touched.

The terrain was an eternity of white. With each step was the iron grip of fear and sorrow. Something everyone knew was once the delicate beauty of vineyards and flower beds. A crater of vegetation that the former Queen always took pride in.

Leaving the dead woman on his bed, he wrapped himself in loose Flesperian garb, nothing too fancy. A dark green tunic with frost embroidery over silk trousers of the highest grade. Then he went to the Crystal Gallery.

In his emerald grace, Regh stood between three pillars of ice. Encased in each of them was a preserved body. Three important people during their time. His uncle, the former High King. His aunt, the Queen. And the High King’s older brother, his father. Even in death as they stood there, they mocked him still.

Regh touched his uncle’s pillar, Ciryh. In doing so, a spark refused him to see through Ciryh’s memories. Glowering, he turned around to see the snow glisten to a fading light, and with it he heard a background of laughter. But it was all in his head.

They dare laugh at him? Him who was robbed of their affection for years? Who people stepped down upon? How many more nights must he endure? In what ways, pray tell, had he wronged the Goddess for life to treat him with nothing but cruel desires? He halted, wanting the miseries to end.

Looking at each of them now, they wailed songs of defeat.

Shouldn’t that please him? That the obstacles he once thought would never leave the stones were now in Idianale’s eternal grasp? He prayed they suffered in the afterlife like how they made him suffer back in the good old days when Grandfather Arren exiled him and his father to the wastes. All because His Royal Pain in the Ass couldn’t accept his mother, a mere vintner who served in palace banquets.

What the fuck, right? Done in by a simple reason as social status.

His grandfather didn’t speak well for himself. All Arren ever knew was to conquer to the point it became exhausting. Maybe not for Regh, because he was still a prince of the kingdom. And being on the frontline of battle was not an option for someone who could inherit the throne one day.

Did he mention that murdering your kin ran in the family? No? Well now people were aware of it.

It was a list of whose father murdered whose grandfather, who exiled his son and grandchildren, who took another noble’s wife’s life because she didn’t end up being on his bed, et cetera, et cetera. He lost count due to the confusion of it all. The roots of the tree that built up their family must have sucked blood for nourishment. Like good old vintage.

Grandpa, grandpa, why so traditional? Now that the past was but mere paper glued to the spine of forgotten archives, he recalled how simple life was before all the chaos. Before his grandfather ordered the death of his mother. Before his father was disowned. Before the birth of his—he shuddered—cousin.

Ah yes. His cousin. That despicable little son of a bitch who actually inherited the mahiqa of foresight, seeing the past, and the vendanaria, an illusory ability. The abyssal black eyes for which people in the empire beheld. Who everyone in the family regarded. His cousin, Val, was the important apple that he hoped to pluck from the tree, but it never rotted for some reason.

Val took from him what was supposed to be his. No, it wasn’t the fact that he was the rightful heir to the throne if Val hadn’t been born with the eyes. What he sought was actually acceptance. A delicate and fragile one.

He should be happy for Val, right? He should be glad that he lived a peaceful, wealthy life deprived of sorrow and pain unlike him. He should be happy. But no. That happiness just reminded him of opportunities that passed by him where he could have killed that ignorant fool. But guess what, he was actually able to end the brat even if he was not physically there to do it.

Regh longed for what every child needed, wanted. What were they called again? Love? Care? Nourishment? Being cherished? He had even forgotten how to pronounce them, let alone smudge them into his vocabulary. He would much rather hurl those words than witness what they were like in the flesh.

His friend, Kerxis—well at least he still had some he could actually call a friend—told him he’s turned bitter and cold. That what he fed his mind and his lands were no longer worthy of kingship.

Blah, blah. Easy for someone who’s known nothing of hardships to say. Kerxis was blind to the bitter pills lulling you to the edge of the gutter being drowned in blood. But as for him, he knew blood, drank from it in fact.

He knew fragile hands that begged him to spare insignificant lives. And he loved those praises. Their cries were music to his ears. Unfortunately, in his father’s eyes, he’d never be worthy enough for merits that donned his pride.

He tried to be worthy, to be reasonable and wise, but all he got in return was a curse. A literal curse. Not the kind of curse where people uttered vulgarity. It was the kind of curse that hailed black mahiqa upon him.

But that would be a story for another time lest he bored the winterwolves and the oh-so-great scholars who read his account. People thought they were too smart to judge him, but what do they know? Nothing. They had no right to spew criticism where he did not ask. People should learn to shut up and enjoy the winter stillness that spiraled them.

There was more to the story behind the many curtains of truth from what people knew.

Now that time blew each of the petals away from the years that began to count his existence, he had to make haste. To search for the wench who held captive the former Queen’s mahiqa. That bitch of a mahiqa chose only females to carry its essence. For the hands of men were always soiled with conquest. It never found a befitting man in the regal bloodline to care for its fragility.

From the atrium of the palace, winterwolves anticipated his return from the Crystal Gallery. With them were some of his loyal subjects. They awaited the signal that would render them harbingers of subjugation.

The winterwolves howled a steady song of warning when the hunt finally commenced. And the people’s screams were the trumpet of a warm and welcoming triumph to the hunger they possessed.

They need to find that woman.